New Zealand

Monday, 9 September 2013

The gripping story of
Gracianna--a French-Basque girl forced to make impossible decisions
after being recruited into the French Resistance in Nazi-occupied Paris.

Gracianna
is inspired by true events in the life of Trini Amador's
great-grandmother, Gracianna Lasaga. As an adult, Amador was haunted by
the vivid memory of finding a loaded German Luger tucked away in a
nightstand while wandering his great-grandmother's home in Southern
California. He was only four years old at the time, but the memory
remained and he knew he had to explore the story behind the gun.

Decades
later, Amador would delve into the remarkable odyssey of his
Gracianna's past, a road that led him to an incredible surprise. In
Gracianna, Amador weaves fact and fiction to tell his
great-grandmother's story.

Gracianna bravely sets off to Paris in
the early 1940s--on her way to America, she hopes--but is soon swept
into the escalation of the war and the Nazi occupation of Paris. After
chilling life-and-death struggles, she discovers that her missing sister
has surfaced as a laborer in Auschwitz. When she finds an opportunity
to fight back against the Nazis to try to free her sister, she takes
it--even if it means using lethal force.

As Amador tells the
imagined story of how his great-grandmother risked it all, he delivers
richly drawn characters and a heart-wrenching page-turner that readers
won't soon forget.

My thoughts

Trini Amador writes with flair and passion in this dramatic retelling. This
book is set in Paris during World War Two. Gracianna
grows up in the Pyrennes mountains and moves to Paris despite her
families objections. They are justifiably concerned for her safety as
Paris is a city defeated and under Nazi occupation.

Life in Paris
is exciting, but also extremely dangerous especially when your young
and Beautiful. Gracianna attracts the unwanted attention of a German
officer who attacks her, Gracianna shoots him with his own gun. The
French Resistance
help her dispose of the body and ask her for help them to kill German
officers in the hopes of upsetting the Germans occupation of their city.Juan,
has always loved Gracianna and follows her to Paris, where he convinces
her to marry him together they help the resistance. Juan is a very
subdued character who does everything Gracianna tells him too. ( she
even refers to him as her lap dog) I struggled with the writers
depiction of Juan, I don't think his character was fleshed out enough,
he didn't really have a voice and I couldn't understand how someone who
was so in love with Gracianna could not be more proactive. Although he
did redeem himself in the later part of the book, I thought there was
something lacking in the plot concerning his role as events played out
in the book.Constance Gracianna’s
sister also comes to Paris,
where she quickly marries a much older wealthy Frenchman. Constance is
hot blooded and determined, and in an argument with her husband she
attracts the unwanted attention of Two German officers who shoot her
husband and beat her. She is accused of theft and sent to Auschwitz.Constance's story of survival was compelling and I was actually drawn to her characters voice
more than Gracianna's as her story was paced well and historically
correct. I would have liked Gracianna's story to have been more
descriptive.